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Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 20032026 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

The acquisition order of coherence relations: On cognitive complexity in discourse

Wilbert Spooren a,*, Ted Sanders b
a

Department of Language and Communication, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands b Utrecht institute of Linguistics UiL OTS, Trans 10, NL-3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands Received 14 July 2006; received in revised form 14 February 2008; accepted 23 April 2008

Abstract This article presents an analysis of the acquisition order of coherence relations between discourse segments. The basis is a cognitive theory of coherence relations (Sanders et al., 1992) that makes predictions about the order in which the relations and their linguistic expressions are acquired, because they show an increasing cognitive complexity. The child language literature lends support to two distinctions in the theory, Basic Operation (causal versus additive) and Polarity (positive versus negative). In two studies, additional data were collected to test the validity of two other distinctions, Source of Coherence and Order of the Coherence Relation. In the rst study, children described a picture or conversed freely with the investigator. Both distinctions turn out to be necessary to account for the acquisition patterns. In the second study, the childrens prociency in dealing with negative causal relations was investigated. The two studies use different research designs. The rst is a study of relatively naturalistic, only partially structured elicitation of extended stretches of speech produced by children, the other is an experiment on the understanding and production of coherence relations in short sequences of statements relying on nonsense words that lack a conventional semantic content. The two procedures tap very different kinds of communicative skills and linguistic as well as conceptual knowledge. The combination of these two studies allows us to draw valid conclusions about the acquisition of the various coherence relations. The data support the claim that cognitively complex coherence relations show up later than cognitively simple relations. # 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Child language; Discourse coherence; Cognition; Dutch

* Corresponding author at: Department of Language and Communication, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 20 598 6572; fax: +31 20 598 6500. E-mail address: w.spooren@let.vu.nl (W. Spooren). 0378-2166/$ see front matter # 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.021

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1. Introduction Coherence is an essential trait of well-formed discourse. Between the segments of a coherent text, relations like Contrast and CauseConsequence must be inferred. These relations play a central role in processes of text comprehension, memory, and reproduction. Consider fragment (1) as an example.1 (1) (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

De juf is heel aardig The teacher [female] is very nice want bijna altijd zegt ze: Goed zo, Deborah because she nearly always says: Well done, Deborah en dat is altijd lief and thats always sweet een meester is heel anders a teacher [male] is very different want die ben ik niet gewend because Im not used to him/them (Deborah 7;3)

The example shows several things. For instance, the units in this fragment are linked through coherence relations: between clauses (b) and (c) an Evaluation relation holds; between (a) and [(b, c)] and between (d) and (e) a ClaimArgument relation obtains; the relation between [(ac)] and [(d, e)] is that of Contrast. The example also shows that coherence relations need not be marked explicitly: The Contrast relation connecting [(d, e)] to its context has to be inferred by the reader, without the help of explicit linguistic cues like connectives (for example and, but, and so). In our analysis of this example we use coherence relations and connectives to characterize the discourse connectedness of the fragment. Traditionally, linguists have approached this problem by looking at overt linguistic elements and structures. In their seminal Cohesion in English, Halliday and Hasan (1976) describe text connectedness in terms of explicit clues that make a text a text, such as reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction. Cohesion occurs when the interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:4). Over the last decennia, the dominant view has come to be that the connectedness of discourse is a characteristic of the mental representation of the discourse rather than of the discourse itself (see Sanders and Pander Maat, 2006, for a recent overview). According to most cognitive scientists, linguists and psycholinguists, understanding discourse means that readers construct a mental representation of the information in the text (Graesser et al., 1997; Gernsbacher and n, 1995; Garnham and Oakhill, 1992). The term coherence is generally used to refer to this Givo type of conceptual connectedness. Discourse coheres in several ways. Generally speaking, at least two types can be identied:

Unless indicated otherwise, our examples come from a corpus of child language data collected for Study 1. Notational conventions: utterances were divided into units; a unit is a main clause, an adverbial clause or an appositive relative clause. We have discarded pauses etc. as these seem irrelevant to our analyses. After each fragment, we give the name of the informant and his/her age in years;months.

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2005

1. 2.

Referential coherence: smaller linguistic units (often nominal groups) may relate to the same mental referent; Relational coherence: A discourse representation shows coherence, because the representation of the discourse segments (most often conceived of as clauses) are connected by coherence relations like CAUSECONSEQUENCE

Although there is a principled difference between the cohesion and the coherence approach to discourse, it is important to realize that coherence phenomena may be of a cognitive nature, but that their reconstruction is often based on linguistic signals in the text itself. Both coherence phenomena under consideration referential and relational coherence have clear linguistic indicators that can be taken as processing instructions. For referential coherence these are devices such as pronouns and demonstratives, and for relational coherence these are connectives and (other) lexical markers of relations, such as cue phrases and signaling phrases. In this article we will focus on relational coherence. Coherence relations (for the term, see Hobbs, 1979; for their analysis in a formal semantic context, see Asher and Lascarides, 1998) are commonly regarded as the cornerstone of comprehension (Graesser et al., 2003:82). Examples are relations such as CAUSECONSEQUENCE, LIST, and PROBLEMSOLUTION. These relations hold locally, that is, between adjacent clauses, but also between larger discourse units, from groups of clauses up to whole sections, paragraphs and even chapters (Sanders, 1997; see Rhetorical Structure Theory: Mann and Thompson, 1988; Taboada and Mann, 2006). Our view on discourse coherence difference, then, somewhat from Hickmanns (2003), who characterizes cohesion as typically dened on the local level of adjacent clauses, whereas coherence is to be found on the more global level of plot organization (p. 93). There have been many studies on the acquisition of connected discourse over the past four decades. Bloom et al. (1980) summarizes a number of ndings in the following ordering of the acquisition of relations: Additive < Temporal < Causal < Adversative Connectives display the following pattern: and < and then < because < so < but Of these, and is rst used for additive relations, and later also for temporal, causal and adversative relations. The other connectives are used more specically: and then for temporal relations, because and so for causal relations, and but for adversative relations.2 In this article we present an explanation for this order, in terms of a theory of coherence relations that is based on the cognitive complexity of general conceptual relations that underlie coherence relations. The theory has been formulated as a classication of coherence relations (Sanders et al., 1992, 1993). In our classication, coherence relations are treated as cognitive entities, as elements of a cognitive construct, the discourse representation. Below, we present an overview of the four parameters underlying the classication (see Appendix A for the complete classication) and some of the ndings in the literature that relate to the distinctions in the classication. Then we will report two empirical studies that were carried
We disregard the place holding function of and and conne ourselves to clause-combining functions of the connectives discussed (Schiffrin, 1986).
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out in order to investigate the predictions about the order of acquisition following from the classication. 1.1. An overview of the classication and how it ts acquisition data For our classication we use four basic relational concepts. They are described in the following sections. For an extensive description, see Sanders et al. (1992, 1993). We also provide an overview of relevant ndings in acquisition research. Basic Operation: additive versus causal relations The Basic Operation refers to the intuition that discourse segments can either be connected strongly (in causal relations) or weakly (in additive relations). In additive relations there is a relation of conjunction between the two segments (2). In causal relations the Basic Operation is implicational as well as conjunctional (3). (2) Additive relation (List) Zij waren aan het vissen en hij was aan het zwemmen. They were shing and he was swimming (Hanneke 7;8) (3) Causal relation (Result) Daar leunt een dikke man tegen een paal en daardoor vallen de blokken van de paal om. There is a fat man leaning against a post. and because of that the building blocks of the post fall down (Daan 11;11) The results from both naturalistic (e.g., Bloom et al., 1980; Eisenberg, 1980) and experimental studies (Piaget, 1924/1969; Katz and Brent, 1968) of rst language acquisition show that additive relations are acquired before causal relations, and that additive connectives are acquired before causal connectives. Polarity: positive versus negative relations In a positive relation, the segments are linked directly. In a negative relation the link involves a negation of one of the segments. For example, in (5) the link between the segments relies on the implication relation if mothers like something, their children like it as well, which is negated in the second segment. (4) Positive relation (Explanation) Soms lees ik wel wat omdat ik wil weten wat er in het boek staat. Sometimes I read something, because I want to know what is in the book (Bram 7;2)

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(5)

Negative relation (Concession) En mama vindt dat leuk. Maar ik vind dat helemaal niet leuk. And mummy likes that. but I dont like that at all (Deborah 7;3)

The observational studies of Bates (1976), Bloom et al. (1980) and Eisenberg (1980) as well as the experimental studies of, for example, Wing and Scholnick (1981) clearly show that positive relations are acquired before negative relations. Source of Coherence: content, epistemic and speech act relations3 In a content relation, the link involves a real world connection: The relation involves the propositional or ideational content of the related segments (example (6)); in an epistemic relation the connection involves the level of reasoning and concluding (example (7)). In a speech act relation, the connection is at the level of illocutions (example (8)). (6) Content relation (ConsequenceCause) Hier is een boot gezonken omdat ze tegen een boei zijn gevaren. Here a ship has sunk because they sailed against a buoy. (Hanneke 12;0) (7) Epistemic relation (Evidence) Dat zijn aapmensen of mensen van vroeger. Those are apemen or ancient people Want wij zijn in het prehistorisch huis geweest Because we have been in the prehistoric house En daar hebben ze ook van die vellen. And there they also have those hides (Bram 7;2) (8) Speech act relation Nieuws vind ik niet leuk. News I dont nd nice [=I dont particluarly like the news [on television]] Want daar vind ik niks aan. Because I dont like it at all (Jordy 6;5)

There are two reasons why conclusions about the relevance of Source of Coherence for acquisition data are not straightforward. First, most acquisition studies in the literature use different categories, which makes it hard to interpret the results directly in terms of Source of
3 In our original proposal we distinguish between semantic and pragmatic relations, the latter subsuming both epistemic and speech act relations. For reasons of terminological uniformity we adopt in this article Sweetsers (1990) terminology. See Sanders and Spooren (2001) for an argument that our bifurcation maps on Sweetsers trifurcation in this way.

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Coherence. Second, for the categories that can be related to the content-epistemic-speech act distinction, some studies (Peterson, 1986; Bloom and Capatides, 1987; Bates, 1976) seem to show that content relations are acquired earlier, whereas other studies (Kyratzis et al., 1990; Piaget, 1923/1971; Corrigan, 1975) suggest that non-content relations (especially speech act relations) are acquired earlier. Order of the segments: basic order or non-basic order Relations are presented in basic order if the information in the rst segment corresponds with the antecedent of the Basic Operation; relations are in non-basic order if the information in the rst segment corresponds with the consequent of the Basic Operation. For instance in (9) the Basic Operation is a causal one someone playing beautifully can cause people to cry. The rst segment relates to the rst element in this causal link, the second segment relates to the second element. In example (10) the same Basic Operation is used, but now the links to the causal connection are reversed: The rst segment relates to the second part of the causal link (the consequent), the second segment relates to the antecedent. (9) Basic order relation (CauseConsequence) Een man speelt viool A man plays the violin en iedereen begint te huilen [. . .]. and everybody starts to cry [. . .]. (Bas 12;0) (10) Non-basic order relation (ConsequenceCause) Die mensen huilen allemaal Those people are all crying omdat die vioolspeler zo mooi speelt. because that violin player plays so beautifully. (Jory 7;4) Order of the Segments does not distinguish between different types of additive relations, since additive relations are logically (although not pragmatically) symmetric. Prior research shows that in specic, experimental, situations, children make more errors identifying non-basic order relations than basic order relations (Bebout et al., 1980). This suggests that basic order relations are acquired earlier. However, in more natural conditions (e.g., observational studies like Hood and Bloom, 1979; French and Nelson, 1985; McCabe and Peterson, 1985) such a difference is not found. This suggests that there is a confounding with research methodology. Source of Coherence seems to be another relevant factor accounting for this difference between observational and experimental studies: experimental studies have focused on content relations, whereas non-content relations (especially speech act relations) are more frequent in observational studies. A nal relevant factor for the difculties children have with non-basic order relations in experimental studies may be the cognitive load on the participants: Peterson and McCabe (1987) have shown that the children performed better after having carried out the task a number of times or when they could use a picture as a memory aid. In short, this survey shows that research results with respect to order of segments are inconclusive.

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2009

1.2. How a theory of coherence relations can account for these data We want to suggest that the differences in emergence reported in the literature can be accounted for in a systematic way. In our analysis, some relations are considered more complex than others as they involve more complex concepts. For instance, Concession relations are more complex than List relations because they involve negation on top of additivity, and Cause Consequence relations are more complex than List-relations because they involve causality in addition to additivity. From the cognitive claims attached to the analysis, it follows that such complexity patterns show up in the order in which coherence relations are acquired. That is, one might expect List relations to be acquired before Contrast relations and before Cause Consequence relations. Similarly, epistemic relations are complex, as they require abstract reasoning, usually exploiting relations that exist between real world events. The conclusion in (11) that this man is a cowboy exploits the real world relationship that cowboys use lassos to catch horses.4 (11) Dat is een cowboy Thats a cowboy, die wil paarden vangen who wants to catch horses want hij heeft een lasso. because he has a lasso (Deborah 7;3) As to the complexity of content versus speech act relations, Kyratzis et al. (1990) argue that speech act relations are least complex. With respect to the fourth distinction, between basic and non-basic relations, basic order relations are less complex than non-basic order relations, at least for the content domain: events connected by a CauseConsequence relation iconically reect the order of the events in the real world. These considerations lead to two types of predictions: Hypothesis 1. Weak prediction: Developmental trends cannot be described without the distinctions made by the classication. Hypothesis 2. Strong prediction: Relations that are analyzed as simple are acquired before relations that are analyzed as complex. In order to test these hypotheses we conducted two studies, in which the relevance of the basic concepts was central. The rst is a corpus study of Dutch, in which we compared coherence relations produced by children more or less spontaneously in a partially structured setting. The corpus study was inconclusive with respect to the acquisition of the most complex relations, namely the negative causal ones. Therefore, we conducted an experiment to test childrens capacity to use these. In sum, we have used two different research designs. The rst is a study of relatively naturalistic, only partially structured elicitation of extended stretches of speech
Analyses of epistemic relations in the mental space framework, like Dancygier and Sweetser (2000) and Verhagen (2000), inevitably portray such relations as more complex than their non-epistemic counterparts.
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produced by children, the other is an experiment on the understanding and production of coherence relations in short sequences of statements relying on nonsense words that lack a conventional semantic content. The two procedures tap very different kinds of communicative skills and linguistic as well as conceptual knowledge. The combination of these two studies allows us to draw valid conclusions about the acquisition of the various coherence relations. 2. Study 1: childrens use of coherence relations while describing and conversing Our rst study is a corpus analytic study under experimental control, using Dutch children as informants. The children were given two tasks, both aiming at the elicitation of complex utterances: a description task (biasing for content relations) and a conversation task (biasing for epistemic and speech act relations). The research was carried out with elementary school children from different age groups: grade 1 (age 67) and grade 6 (age 1112). This cross-sectional design allows inferences on the developmental patterns in the children. The general research question is to what extent the classication explains for differential patterns in the acquisition data, in accordance with the weak and the strong prediction. The weak prediction is that differences in use of coherence relations between the two age groups can be described in terms of the primitives of the classication. According to the strong prediction, coherence relations that are classied as cognitively simply are acquired before complex coherence relations. More specically this leads to the following four research questions. 1. Is there any evidence for the strong prediction based on the classication of relations, namely that complex relations are acquired later than simple relations?

The observations of Bates (1976), Bloom et al. (1980), and Eisenberg (1980) and the experimental data of Piaget (1924/1969), Katz and Brent (1968), and Scott (1984) support the distinctions based on the concepts Basic Operation and Polarity. They also suggest that less complex relations are acquired earlier than complex relations. Therefore, we expected younger children to use less negative and causal relations than older children. 2. Is there any reason to assume a difference in degree of complexity between content and other relations?

Different researchers arrive at different conclusions concerning the degree of difculty of content versus other relations. Diachronically, epistemic and speech act relations are derived from content relations (cf. Sweetser, 1990; Tabor and Traugott, 1998). On that basis it is tempting to assume that non-content relations are more complex than content relations (following Bates, 1976). But ontogeny need not replicate phylogeny (Traugott, 1997). The most sophisticated picture is presented by Kyratzis et al. (1990), who claim that speech act relations are acquired before content relations, which in turn are acquired before epistemic relations. However, these ndings are based on data collected in a context that is heavily biased toward non-content (more specically, speech act) relations. An unanswered question is whether the same goes in a context biased for content relations. To answer this question we will compare the amount of content and non-content (epistemic and speech act) relations produced by the two age groups. 3. Is the Source of Coherence determined by the context (text type) in which the utterance was produced?

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2011

The seemingly contradictory results with respect to Source of Coherence may be attributable to a difference in context in which the data were collected. We have argued elsewhere (Sanders, 1997) that text type and the type of coherence relations found in a discourse correlate strongly. Informative and descriptive texts show large numbers of content relations, whereas epistemic and speech act relations dominate argumentative texts. This being so, the type of context in which data are collected seems a major factor in the type of relations produced by the children. We expected to nd more content relations in the descriptive task, and more non-content (epistemic and speech act) relations in the conversation task. 4. Do we need a separate basic concept Order of the Segments, apart from Iconicity?

This question pertains to the discussion whether the Iconicity principle sufces to account for the ordering patterns in the data or whether we need an additional principle, Order of the Segments. The Iconicity principle (or Order of Mention principle, Clark and Clark, 1977:358) states that iconic ordering is more easy than non-iconic ordering, because it reects the order of the events in the real world. As Iconicity applies to events only, it is restricted to content relations. The crucial question is whether non-content (epistemic and speech act) relations also show preferences for specic orderings. If so, we need an additional principle Order of Segments, apart from Iconicity. 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Materials Each child was given two tasks: a description task and a conversation task. In the description task (which biased for content relations) children had to describe a number of Wheres Waldo? (Handford, 1991) pictures, that show large numbers of causally related events, such as a man walking under a ladder, whistling and unaware that on the ladder a window cleaner has just dropped a bucket of water. In the conversation task (bias for epistemic and speech act relations) the children had to formulate an opinion concerning a number of controversial topics, such as vetoed TV programs, wearing brand clothing at school, the amount of the childrens pocket money, etc. 2.1.2. Participants The investigation was carried out with six children from grade 1 and six children from grade 6 of an elementary school in a medium-sized town in the south of the Netherlands. The choice of these age groups was inspired by choices made in related research: Younger children do not produce wide varieties of coherence relations, and as to the upper boundary of grade 6, Piaget (1924/1969) claims that at age 1112, children begin to use even the most complex relations. Indeed, Evers-Vermeul (2005) nds hardly any use of these negative causal relations in her study of young children (roughly 1;65 years of age), and if they show up, they appear after positive causal relations emerge. The two age groups in our study consisted of equal numbers of boys and girls. The reading level of the children varied equally in each age group. The mean age of the children in the younger age group was 7;2 (min. 6;7, max. 7;8). The mean age of the children in the older age group was 12;1 (min. 11;11, max. 12;7). All children had Dutch as their rst language. 2.1.3. Procedure Each child was interviewed individually in a separate room of the elementary school they attended. Each child was given the two tasks, each task lasting circa 10 min. In the description

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task, the children were given a picture from a Wheres Waldo book, along with the following instruction: In this picture all sorts of things are happening. Can you tell me what is happening and how that has come about? In order to prevent a bias from this formulation for specic orderings of descriptions, the formulation of the instruction was varied with Tell me how this has come about, what is happening here? In the conversation task, the children were stimulated to give their opinion on a number of topics and to motivate their opinion. The responses of the researcher were restricted to presenting the instruction, and to back-channel behavior. 2.1.4. Data analysis The childrens utterances were recorded on a cassette recorder and transcribed. The unit of transcription and analysis was the clause: main sentences, adverbial subordinative sentences and appositive relative clauses were taken as minimal units. Only uninterrupted utterances were taken into account. Subsequently, the transcripts were analyzed by two judges, on the basis of the set of coherence relations specied in Mann and Thompsons (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). This model of analysis was chosen because of its descriptive width. Of each utterance it was decided between which clauses an RST-relation existed. Then this relation was analyzed in terms of the four basic concepts of Sanders et al. (1992). Appendix B gives an example of a protocol fragment. Examples (211) above are taken from the corpus and illustrate the categorization. Appendix C shows further criteria for distinguishing between content, epistemic and speech act relations. Following Bloom et al. (1980) we have used two strategies to guarantee the reliability of the analysis. The coders have made use of all the contextual information available to interpret the relations between the utterances. Furthermore we have the principle of cumulative semantic complexity: the relations have been interpreted as specically as possible. In terms of the classication this means that additive or temporal relations which can have a causal interpretation, are coded as causal relations. Note that by following this procedure we are studying the occurrence of coherence relations as well as their linguistic marking. It can be asked whether we study emergence or acquisition. By looking at the use of the relations, it follows that our prime focus is emergence. However, we also investigate acquisition because we study whether coherence relations are correctly used, that is, we pay attention to the (mis)match between connective and coherence relation. Occasionally the childrens use of a connective is deviant. An example is (12). Example (12) [Wat doe je het liefste als je uit school bent en waarom?] [What do you like to do most when you are out of school and why?] 1 Nou ik zit op voetbal Well I play football 2a En dat vind ik leuk And that I like 2b omdat ik iedere dag oefen voor voetbal because I practice every day for football 3 En dan word ik steeds beter. [cause] and then I am getting better and better 4 Dan spelen we echte wedstrijden [list] Then we play real games

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2013

5 6 7

En dan zit het hele stadion vol [list] And then the stadium is crowded En dan verliezen we soms. [list] And then we loose sometimes Maar het meeste winnen we. But mostly we win [31; Jordy; 6;7]

In this fragment Jordy uses a strategy commonly found among young children: many utterances are connected by the temporal marker en dan (and then), suggesting a temporal sequence of events. However, sometimes a differently relation seems intended. For example, in line 3 en dan is used to signal a causal relationship (he probably intends to express a complex relationship that another reason why he likes football is that because of practicing every day he gets better and better at it). The example has been analyzed as a causal relation, signaled by a temporal connective (a so-called implicit use of connectives, see Spooren, 1997). This is an indication that Jordy has not acquired the intricate possibilities of using en dan (literally a temporal connective) to express causal relations. Still, he does know how to use the intended causal relationship. In total, the children produced 1355 utterances (112.9 utterances per child), 756 in the description task (63.0 per child) and 599 in the conversation task (49.9 per child). 1097 coherence relations were analyzed (526 in the description task, 571 in the conversation task). The children in grade 1 produced 566 coherence relations (mean of 94.3 relations per child), the children in grade 6 produced 531 relations (mean of 88.5 relations per child). Per child, the percentage of categories mentioned in the hypotheses and research questions was calculated (e.g., the percentage of content relations in basic order). These percentages were analyzed using: a. the MannWhitney rank order sum test for differences between two age groups (for instance, the difference in percentage of content relations between grade 1 and grade 6); b. the binomial test for evaluating one-sample distributions (for instance, the observed percentage content relations compared to the expected percentage if content and non-content relations were to occur equally frequently). In addition, for the analysis of frequencies x2-tests were used. 2.2. Results 2.2.1. Reliability of the analyses The analyses were carried out by two analysts independent from each other, after careful instruction and on the basis of a coding scheme (see Appendix C for an example of the coding scheme). Cohens kappa coefcient of agreement between two analysts was calculated separately for each childs data. Agreement was lowest for Order of the segments (with K varying from .40 to .83 in grade 1, and from .78 to 1.00 in grade 6). For Basic Operation K varied from .66 to .91 for grade 1 and from .88 to 1.00 for grade 6. For Source of Coherence K varied from .66 to .88 for grade 1, and from .90 to .98 for grade 6. Finally, for Polarity K varied form .54 to 1.00 for grade 1 and from .87 to 1.00 for grade 6.

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Table 1 Coherence relations in our corpus classied as content, epistemic or speech act (both by grade and by task) (row percentage in parentheses) (Study 1) Type of relation Grade 1 6 Task Description Conversation Content 375 (67.4) 279 (53.9) 487 (94.2) 167 (30.0) Epistemic 21 (3.8) 37 (7.1) 26 (5.0) 32 (5.7) Speech Act 160 (28.8) 202 (39.0) 4 (.8) 358 (64.3)

Note. In 23 cases the epistemic/speech act character of the relation was unclear.

2.2.2. Tests of the hypotheses COMPLEX RELATIONS. It was expected that causal, negative and negative causal relations, which in terms of the classication are more complex than their additive and/or positive counterparts are more frequently used by older children. This turned out not to be the case: Causal relations: grade 1: 56%, grade 6: 50% (z = 1.28, p = .28); negative relations: grade 1: 6%, grade 6: 10% (z = 1.44, p = .16); negative causal relations: grade 1: 2%, grade 6: 2%; z = .16, p = .88). SOURCE OF COHERENCE AND COMPLEXITY. The data are summarized in Table 1. Summed over both tasks, the children produced more content relations than non-content relations (content relations: 59%; binomial test: p < .05). Moreover, younger children produced more content relations than older children (grade 1: 66% content relations; grade 6: 52% content relations; z = 2.56, p < .01). If we compare epistemic or speech act relations separately, the two age groups show no difference: grade 1 produced 181 non-content relations, 21 of which (11.6%) were epistemic. Grade 6 produced 239 non-content relations, 37 of which (15.5%) were epistemic (z = .48, p = .63). Therefore, there is no indication that younger children have more difculty with epistemic relations than older children. ROLE OF CONTEXT. As expected, it was found that the task determines the type of relations produced by the children: in the descriptive task more content relations (92.6%), in the conversational task more non-content (epistemic and speech act) relations (72.3%) (in a binomial test, both percentages differ from chance, p < .001). As can be seen in Table 1, the predominance of non-content relations in the conversational task is mainly due to the number of speech act relations: in the description task there are 30 noncontent relations, of which 26 (86.7%) are epistemic and 4 (13.3%) are speech act. In the conversation task, there are 319 non-content relations, of which 32 (8.2%) are epistemic, and 358 (91.8%) are speech act (x2(1) = 483.84, p < .001). RELATION BETWEEN SOURCE OF COHERENCE AND ORDER OF THE SEGMENTS. As expected, content relations showed a preference for basic order (87%; binomial test: p < .05) and non-content relations showed a preference for non-basic order (78%; binomial test: p < .05). 2.3. Discussion We did not nd evidence for the hypothesis that causal, negative and negative causal relations were more difcult for younger children. Does this imply that complex relations are not acquired later, contrary to what was expected on the basis of the classication? We believe there is another explanation, at least for the use of the causal and negative additive relations: It is likely that even the youngest age group has already acquired causal and negative relations. Evers-Vermeul (2005)

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2015

and Evers-Vermeul and Sanders (submitted for publication) have looked at the rst occurrence of connectives in naturalistic data from children of age 1;6-up. Although they studied connectives and not coherence relations, their data suggest that causal and contrastive connectives occur very early indeed.5 Before they are three, most children have acquired causal (want, omdat) and negative (maar) connectives. Hence, these results would explain why we do not nd a difference between the age groups in this study. At the same time, however, these data of younger children show direct evidence for the idea of cumulative cognitive complexity: negative connectives emerge later than positive connectives and causal connectives are preceded by additive connectives. In the case of negative causal relations, we seem to be dealing with a bottom effect: only 2% of the relations produced was negative causal. Consequently, it is not possible to say whether the relation as such is too complex for even the oldest children or whether the tasks employed did not elicit the use of negative causal relations. This point will be taken up in the next section. For Source of Coherence, we did nd that content relations were indeed simpler than noncontent relations. Our data accord in this respect with the suggestions by Bates (1976) and Bloom and Capatides (1987) that content relations are simpler than non-content ones. Yet, they contrast with the ndings of Kyratzis et al. (1990), suggesting that their ndings (speech act relations are acquired before content relations) were indeed biased by the communicative context of the task they used. This interpretation is strongly corroborated by another new nding in this study: the type of relations children use depends on the communicative task. In a descriptive task they mainly use content relations, while non-content relations predominate in conversational tasks. Finally, our data provide convincing evidence for the status of Order of the Segments as an independent primitive in our classication: non-content relations tend to be realized in a non-basic order, a bias which cannot be accounted for in terms of a general Iconicity principle: a temporal ordering of the events described by the segments is irrelevant in the case of non-content relations. In conclusion, our data provide only moderate support for the strong prediction. There is no indication that relations that are classied as complex by Sanders et al. (1992) are acquired later. This holds both for causal relations as opposed to additive relations, for negative relations as opposed to positive relations (although here the difference is marginally signicant), and for negative causal relations. It seems that even the youngest age group has acquired causal relations, so that differences between age groups do not occur. About half of the relations produced by both age groups are causal. This suggests that in future research younger children should be tested. 3. Study 2: childrens use of contrastive causeconsequence relations The data of Study 1 were inconclusive with respect to the question of complex relations, more specically, with respect to the childrens prociency in dealing with negative causal relations. Example (13) is a classic example of such a relation: in the terminology of Sanders et al. (1992), this example is an instance of the Contrastive CauseConsequence (CCC) relation (also known as the Denial of Expectation relation). (13) Although John is a Republican, he is honest.

According to most analyses of such examples (e.g., Lakoff, 1971; Van Dijk, 1977; Abraham, 1979; Blakemore, 1989; Spooren, 1989; Oversteegen, 1997), a Contrastive CauseConsequence
As we have stated repeatedly, this does not necessarily mean that causal coherence relations also occur very early, but that inference is very likely.
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relation presents two states of affairs (John being a Republican and John being honest), in which the second state-of-affairs runs counter to what could be expected on the basis of the rst. In other words, a Contrastive CauseConsequence relation like (13) can only be used if there is some sort of presupposition or expectation that generally Republicans are dishonest. Because of the implicational character of the presupposition underlying (13) this relation is classied as causal, and because the implication can only be related to the actual utterance through a negation, the relation is classied as negative. Hence, the Contrastive CauseConsequence relation is an example of a negative causal relation. Ever since Piaget, it is known that CCC relations, or, as he calls them, relations of discordance, are notoriously difcult to learn. Yet, the precise cause of the complexity is difcult to assess, because the factors that may determine the complexity have not been isolated carefully. For instance, (13) may be complex for syntactic reasons (it is a subordinate construction), for lexical reasons (because of the conjunction although), or for semantics reasons (because of the presence of the negation), or for reasons of discourse coherence (the complexity of the relation-itself). Furthermore, different researchers give different assessments of the exact age at which children have fully acquired the relation. Some put it as early as age 7 (Bloom et al., 1980; Peterson, 1986), others put it as late as age 13 (Piaget, 1924/1969; Katz and Brent, 1968; Scott, 1984). In spontaneous observational data, the CCC relation is hardly ever found. This is partly due to the fact that most researchers focus on connectives rather than coherence relations, and the connective although is very infrequent in child language. But also in the research discussed above, explicitly aimed at analyzing relations rather than connectives, there were few occurrences of a CCC relation. This makes it uncertain whether children do not have the prociency to use the relation or whether the communicative context in which the corpus was elicited did not give rise to the use CCC relations. Because of the infrequency of CCC relations in spontaneous speech, the question of the childs prociency in dealing with these relations needed to be answered via an experiment. The experiment was designed to investigate the childrens prociency with respect to the CCC relation.6 What we wanted to know was whether children display developmental patterns, and if so, whether these patterns reect the analysis of coherence relations in terms of the categorization. In the experiment, children had to complete forced-choice items. In those items, they had to choose between two possible completions of a discourse fragment. The items were designed in such a manner that the choice reects understanding of the coherence relation. The question under study is whether CCC relations are more complex than other relations. This leads to two hypotheses: Hypothesis 1. Children perform worse on items involving CCC relations than on items involving non-causal and/or non-negative relations. Hypothesis 2. Younger children perform worse on items involving CCC relations than older children. 3.1. Method 3.1.1. Material Two sorts of item sets were developed. In the design of the sets, the analysis of CCC relations implying (presupposing) a general rule was made use of. The rst set consisted of items like the following.
6

The experiment was designed in close collaboration with and carried out by Hanny den Ouden (cf. Den Ouden, 1995).

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Contrastive ConsequenceCause (negative causal: sentence completion) People who are lok wear sweaters. Els is lok but she is . . . a. not wearing a sweater. b. wearing a sweater.

That is, the subjects were given a general rule, and on the basis of this rule they had to choose between two solutions to complete a sequence containing but. This task was chosen because it more or less resembles the production process: On the basis of an available rule, the speaker makes a formulation choice. The items contained nonsense words (e.g., the word lok) to prevent the children to base their choice on real world knowledge in stead of on knowledge of the linguistic connective but and the coherence relation it encodes. The second set of items was of the following type: (15) Contrastive ConsequenceCause (negative causal: inferring a general rule) Manel has a lot of money, but she is not bap. a. People who have much money are not bap. b. People who have much money are bap.

In this case the subjects were given a but-sequence. On the basis of this sequence, they had to choose which of two alternatives they thought to be the case as a rule. In a way, this task resembles the interpretation process: The underlying idea is that a correct interpretation of a CCC relation implies inferring the general rule. Hypothesis 1 predicts that CCC relations are more complex than positive causal relations and negative additive relations. To test this prediction, other items were used that contain Result relations with the marker and therefore and Contrast relations with the marker but. Examples are: (16) Result relation (positive causal): sentence completion Tall people are rast. Broes is tall and therefore she is . . . a. rast b. not rast Result relation (positive causal): inferring a general rule Jani has black hair and therefore he is iepen. a. People with black hair are not iepen. b. People with black hair are iepen. Contrast relation (negative additive): sentence completion Jakki goes to ploef, but Boli goes to . . . a. pluik b. ploef

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Because the interpretation of the Contrast relation does not imply inferring a general rule (see Spooren, 1989), there were no Contrast items in the inference task. The presence (present/absent) and position of a negation in the items (rst clause, second clause), and the position of the nonsense word (rst clause/second clause), were systematically varied. In total, there were 24 items in the completion task, and 16 items in the inference task.

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Apart from these 40 nonsense items, there were 20 meaningful items, without a nonsense word. These items were added to study whether the children were able to perform the task if they could use real world knowledge. Twelve meaningful items were presented in the completion task, and eight items in the inference task. 3.1.2. Participants On the basis of a number of pretests, it was decided to use children from grade 3 as the younger age group (younger children did not succeed in performing the task) and children from grade 6 as the older age group. In the experiment, 32 children from grade 3 and 29 children from grade 6 cooperated. The children were recruited from three Dutch elementary schools. The reading level of the children varied equally between age groups. The younger group varied in age from 8;0 to 9;9 years (mean: 8;7), the older group varied in age from 10;11 to 13;0 years (mean: 11;8). In both age groups, the number of boys was somewhat larger than the number of girls (grade 3: 17 boys, grade 6: 16 boys). 3.1.3. Design The items were presented to the subjects in two blocks. In the rst block the nonsense items were presented, in the second block the regular items. This order was xed to prevent the subjects from developing a strategy of using real world knowledge (as induced by the meaningful items) to respond to the nonsense items. Each block consisted of two subblocks: a completion task block and an inference task block. The order of these subblocks varied between lists. The order of the items within each subblock was randomized, but did not vary between subjects. The factor Relation Type (for completion task: CCC, Result, Contrast; for inference task: CCC, Result) was repeated with respect to both subjects and items. The factor Age Group (grade 3, grade 6) was a between-subjects, withinitems factor. 3.1.4. Procedure and data analysis The experiment was carried out individually. It consisted of 60 two-choice items. The experiment was preceded by a lengthy instruction to the task. Then the children were presented with test items until it was clear that they understood the task. After that, the 60 experimental items were presented to the children. Presentation of the items differed for the two age groups. For the younger group the test items and the experimental items were presented both orally and in writing, because a pretest had shown that this age group could not cope with a written-only task. The older group were given the test items orally and in writing, but the experimental items only in writing. In the case of sentence completion items the children chose between two possible continuations, as in example (14). In the case of general inference items the children chose between two possible rules, see example (15). A percentage correct responses was calculated per type of relation per child. This was done separately for nonsense and meaningful items and for the completion task and the inference task. These percentages were analyzed using MannWhitney tests to test differences between age groups and Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests to test differences within age groups. 3.2. Results The results are summarized in Table 2. These data will be discussed separately for the nonsense items and for the meaningful items.

W. Spooren, T. Sanders / Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 20032026 Table 2 Percentages correct responses as a function of age, task, and relation type (Study 2) Task Completion NegAdd Items containing nonsense words Age 89 79 1112 93 Meaningful items Age 89 1112 PosCau NegCau Inference PosCau

2019

NegCau

82 92

41 62

75 93

25 53

88 97

95 97

44 78

95 100

59 78

3.2.1. Nonsense items Hypothesis 1 states that CCC relations are more difcult than the other relations. This was found in both the inference task and the completion task. For the inference task: CCC relations: 39% correct, positive causal relations: 84% correct (z = 5.56, p < .001; for the completion task: CCC relations: 51% correct, positive causal relations: 86% correct (difference with CCC-relations: z = 5.10, p < .001), negative additive relations 86% correct (difference with CCC-relations: z = 5.53, p < .001). The second hypothesis states that younger children have more trouble with the CCC relations than older children. This was also found for both the inference task (grade 3: 25% correct, grade 6: 53% correct, z = 2.66, p < .01) and the completion task (grade 3: 41% correct, grade 6: 62% correct, z = 2.32, p < .05). 3.2.2. Meaningful items As in the case of the nonsense items, CCC relations were more difcult than other relations, both in the inference task and the completion task (inference task: CCC relations: 68% correct, positive causal relations: 97% correct, z = 5.30, p < .001; completion task: CCC relations: 60% correct, positive causal relations: 96% correct (difference with CCC relations: z = 4.95, p < .001, negative additive items: 92% correct (difference with CCC relations: z = 4.71, p < .001). It is also the case that younger children nd the CCC relation more difcult than the older children (inference task: grade 3: 59% correct, grade 6: 78% correct, z = 2.37, p < .05; completion task: grade 3: 44% correct, grade 6: 78% correct, z = 3.45, p < .01). 3.3. Discussion The results show that both age groups can deal with the concept of polarity and the concept of causality per se. Even the younger of the two age groups performs substantially better than chance at both negative additive items and positive causal items. The complexity is in the combination of the two. Items that are both negative AND causal create difculties. Note that this effect cannot be attributed to the complexity of the marker of the CCC relation because in Contrast items and in CCC items the same marker has been used (namely the marker but). Nor can it be attributed to the syntactic or semantic complexity of the constructions, because in all items the same syntactic construction was used, namely a coordinate conjunction, and in all items the presence or absence of a negation was varied systematically. The conclusion must be that it is the complexity of the coherence relation that creates the complexity. And this is precisely in line with the predictions following from our classication of coherence relations.

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The same conclusion, namely that negative causal relations are more complex than the other relations in the experiment, can be drawn from the fact that, with age, children learn to interpret the CCC relation better. This may not be so obvious from the mean scores, because these are all relatively low, specically for the nonsense items. But it is certainly obvious if we look at the individual response patterns of the subjects. For instance there were 13 subjects who gave correct answers to all or nearly all items. Of these, 12 were from the older group and 1 from the younger group. By contrast, the 14 children that seemed to answer randomly nearly all came from the younger age group. In conclusion, it seems that these data lend support to the thesis that CCC relations are more complex than the others. This is in line with our cognitive theory of coherence relations which analyzes CCC relations as most complex. 4. General discussion The child language literature provides ample support for both the weak and the strong prediction that follows from the classication of coherence relations as proposed by Sanders et al. (1992). Additive relations are acquired before causal relations and positive relations are acquired before negative relations. New empirical data were gathered in the two studies reported in this paper. Study 1 was an analysis of spoken data in two communicative settings (a descriptive task and a conversational task). It has shown a strong interaction between Source of Coherence and Order of the Segments, thus corroborating these basic concepts. The experiment in Study 2 has shown that negative causal relations are acquired later than negative additive and positive causal relations, irrespective of syntactic construction and semantic or lexical complexity, in line with the strong prediction following from the classication. Therefore, these data support a cognitive interpretation of the classication: Language users make use of their (tacit) knowledge of these basic concepts when they process language. Do the results of Study 1 really support the idea of cognitive complexity? After all, older children do not use complex relations like causals more often than younger children. We believe that this result is not in conict with the complexity idea, because even the younger children in our study had already acquired the concept of causality. The implication is that the utterances of younger children should be studied to nd the kind of differences under discussion. This is corroborated by EversVermeuls (2005) analysis of causal connectives produced by very young Dutch children (ages between 1;6 and 6;0), who predominantly showed the acquisition order additivetemporalcausal. The ecological validity of the task in Study is admittedly relatively low. The children had to make inferences on the basis of nonsense words. However, we believe that in combination with the more naturalistic tasks in Study 1, this somewhat articial nature of the task is compensated for. Moreover, the design of Study 2 allows a more precise investigation of questions that remained unanswered when using natural settings: It taps communicative behavior that does not manifest itself in more or less spontaneous settings. The converging nature of these different sets of data allow for the conclusions that we drew. Nevertheless, sufcient questions for future research remain. Additive relations (or at least the content additive relations) can be further subdivided into purely additive and additive-temporal relations. Studying childrens narratives, Berman (1996) found that younger children (3-year olds) use Hebrew ve (roughly equivalent to English and) as a clause-chaining device, but that older children (5- and 9-year olds) increasingly use it to express temporal sequentiality. They also use relatively more other lexical markers of sequentiality (then, afterwards, after that). This tendency may be expected because temporal sequence is taken to be more complex than purely

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additive relations: interpretation involves the temporality feature. Obviously, there are many degrees of temporality (overlap, (partial) precedence, (partial) postcedence), and there are many (mostly formal semantically inspired) studies of how natural language is sensitive to expressing these distinctions (see Oversteegen, 1989 for an analysis of Dutch temporal connectives). The order in which such distinctions are acquired may shed light on the validity of the Sanders et al. (1992) claim that the temporal distinction is secondary to the additivecausal distinction. As a methodological point, we see the fact that the analysis of discourse coherence crucially involves conceptual relations rather than linguistic connections as an urgent issue for future research. In his paper on the methodology of cognitive linguistics, Langacker (1999) takes as a starting point for linguistic research the analysis of explicit linguistic elements. This seems to put the analysis of coherence relations outside of the realm of linguistics, by denition. We believe that such a move would be precipitate and that linguistic regularities behind coherence relations can and should be studied within linguistics. But we are also convinced that the analysis of discourse coherence is in urgent need of reliable and valid analyses of coherence relations. As we have argued elsewhere (Sanders and Spooren, 2007), the strategy of converging evidence followed in this article may be benecial to that goal. Acknowledgements The research reported here would have been impossible without the contributions of Rinda den Besten, Hanny den Ouden, Kiek Tates, and Janneke Visser. Leo Noordman and Jacqueline EversVermeul commented on earlier versions of this article. Aleth Bolt corrected our English. We also like to thank two anonymous reviewers of Journal of Pragmatics for their helpful comments. Appendix A. Overview of the classication (Sanders et al., 1993) Overview of the taxonomy and some prototypical RST-relations
Basic Operation Causal Causal Causal Causal Causal Causal Causal Causal Additive Additive Additive Additive Source of Coherence Content Content Content Content Epist/SA Epist/SA Epist/SA Epist/SA Content Content Epist/SA Epist/SA Order Basic Basic Non-basic Non-basic Basic Basic Non-basic Non-basic Polarity Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative Positive Negative Class 1.a 1.b 2. 3.a 3.b 4. 5.a 5.b 6. 7.a 7.b 8. 9.a 9.b 10. 11. 12. Relation in Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) (Non-)volitional cause Condition Contrast (Non-)volitional result Condition Contrast Evaluation Interpretation Anti-thesis Evidence Motivation Anti-thesis Sequence Joint Contrast Presentational sequence Concession

Note. Epist/SA: Epistemic / Speech Act. In the original classications we distinguished between Semantic and Pragmatic relations, where the latter category included both Epistemic and Speech Act relations. For reasons of presentation (consistency with other literature) we have avoided the original terminology in this article.

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Below, each class of relations is illustrated with example of a typical RST-relation. Linguistic markers are in italics.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) Non-volitional result Because there was a heavy storm, the tiles fell from of the roof. Contrast Although there was a storm, no tiles have fallen from the roof. Non-volitional cause The tiles fell from the roof, because there was a heavy storm. ees. Contrast No tiles have fallen from the roof, even though there was a heavy storm. Interpretation A lot of tiles have fallen from the roof. There must have a been a heavy storm. Anti-thesis Although there was a heavy storm, I am sure not a tile will have fallen from the roof. Evidence I am absolute sure there was a heavy storm. All the tiles have fallen from the roof. Anti-thesis I am sure not a tile will have fallen from the roof, even though there was a heavy storm. Sequence There was a heavy storm last Tuesday. On wednesday we had snow. Contrast There was a heavy storm last Tuesday. But the next day we had beautiful sunny weather. Presentational Sequence (There was a heavy storm last Tuesday). The tiles have fallen from the roof. Furthermore, I saw a tree lying on the street. Concession Some tiles have fallen from the roof. But I still think the storm was not that bad.

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Appendix B. Sample from the corpus (Study 1)

Utterance Grade 1 (a) Die meneer schiet een pijl. En dan klapt de band. That man shoots an arrow. And then the tire bursts. (b) Die mensen huilen allemaal. Omdat die vioolspeler zo mooi speelt. Those people are all crying. Because that violinist is playing so beautifully. (c) Ze zijn ramen aan het wassen. En dan laat hij zijn emmertje vallen. They are cleaning the windows. And then he drops his little bucket. (d) We verliezen soms [met voetbal]. Maar meestal winnen we. Sometimes we lose [at soccer]. But usually we win. (e) Ik heb liever een juf. Want een juf is veel liever als een meester. I prefer a female teacher. Because a female teacher is much sweeter than a male teacher. (f) Bassie en Adriaan is leuk. Skippy vind ik niet leuk. Bassie and Adrian [a childrens TV program] is nice. Skippy isnt nice. Classication ca ca con con ba nba po po RST-relation CA RE

ad

con

na

po

CI

ad

con

na

neg

OP

ca

sa

nba

pos

EV

ad

sa

na

neg

OP

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Appendix B (Continued )
Utterance Grade 6 (g) Een klein jongetje duwt de vazen van de tafel af. En daardoor vallen de vazen kapot. A little boy pushes the vases of the table. And because of that the vases fall to pieces. (h) Hier denken de mensen dat er een haai komt. Want er zijn twee jochies die houden een stok met een vin omhoog. Here the people think that a shark is coming. Because there are two kids who hold up a stick with a n. (i) Hier heb je een skelet van een dinosaurus. En daar staan allemaal holbewoners bij. Here you have the skeleton of a dinosaure. And a lot of cavemen are standing close to it. (j) Die ene visser heeft een grote boot met allemaal visnetten. En die vangt helemaal geen vis. That one sherman has a large boat with all sorts of shing nets. And that one isnt catching any sh. (k) Mij maakt het nooit uit [of ik merkkleding draag]. Als je maar leuke dingen hebt. To me it never matters [whether Im wearing brand clothing. As long as you [i.e. I] have nice things. (l) Ik vind het ook wel spannend [om van school te gaan]. Want daar is alles nieuw. I think it is also quite exciting [to leave school]. Because everything is new there. Classication RST-relation

ca

con

ba

pos

CA

ca

con

nba

pos

RE

ad

con

na

pos

CI

ca

con

ba

neg

CO

ca

sa

nba

pos

CD

ca

ep

nba

pos

EV

Note. Classication categories: ad: additive; ca: causal; ba: basic order; nba: non-basic order; na: not applicable; con: content; sa: speech act; ep: epistemic; pos: positive; neg: negative. Relations: CA: cause; CI: circumstance; OP: opposition; RE: result; CO: contrast; CD: condition; EV: evidence.

Appendix C. Analysis of content, epistemic and speech act relations (Study 1) The paraphrase criteria sketched below were introduced in Sanders (1997). A relation was considered a content relation if it passed the following paraphrase test: (C1) Paraphrase criteria for content relations a. S1. This fact causes/caused the fact S2. b. S1. This fact is/was caused by the fact that S2.

The categorization as epistemic or speech act relations was done with a satisfactory amount of interrater agreement (Cohens k = .69, n = 430). Non-content relations were considered epistemic if they could be paraphrased with any of the following phrases: (C2) Paraphrase criteria for epistemic relations a. S1. And on the basis of this I conclude here and now that S2. b. I conclude here and now that S1. I do this on the basis of S2. c. It must be the case that S1. My evidence for that is S2. d. It probably is the case that S1. My evidence for that is S2.

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Another distinguishing feature of epistemic relations is that they involve the generation/inference of new knowledge (as opposed to the conveying of existing knowledge that occurs frequently in speech act relations). A typical epistemic relation is: (C3) [Chantal points to a mummy walking around; in the corner of the picture there is an open cofn] a. Daar komt een mummie There comes a mummy b. Misschien hebben ze de kist opengedaan Maybe they opened the cofn (Chantal 12:6)

The relationship between (C2)a and (C2)b is epistemic because the speaker concludes here and now that a possible explanation for the mummy walking around is that someone opened the cofn. Relationships were categorized as speech act relations if they could be paraphrased as in (C3). (C3) Paraphrase criteria for speech act relations a. I say to you, order you, ask you . . . (etc.) S1. The basis for my speech act is that S2. b. Given that S1 is the case, I say to you, order you, ask you . . . (etc.) S2.

A typical example of a speech act relation is the following: (C4) a. b. En Sesamstraat vind ik niet meer zo leuk And I dont like Sesame Street very much anymore Want daar ben ik nu te groot voor. Because Im too old for that (Rose 12:3) The relation between (C4)a. and b. is a speech act relation because the speaker is telling the interviewer that she does not like Sesame Street very much anymore, and the basis for this statement is that she has outgrown the program.

References
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